Just so everybody knows who he is. They also funded the vote stealing software Diebold was using. They need to GO TO PRISON!
Avenging angel of the religious right
Quirky millionaire Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on a mission from God to stop gay marriage, fight evolution, defeat "liberal" churches -- and reelect George W. Bush.
By Max Blumenthal
Jan 6, 2004 | In the summer of 2000, a group of frustrated Episcopalians from the board of the American Anglican Council gathered at a sun-soaked Bahamanian resort to blow off some steam and hatch a plot. They were fed up with the Episcopal Church and what they perceived as a liberal hierarchy that had led it astray from centuries of so-called orthodox Christian teaching. The only option, they believed, was to lead a schism.
But this would take money. After the meeting, Anglican Council vice president Bruce Chapman sent a private memo to the group's board detailing a plan to involve Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., a Southern California millionaire, and his wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, in the plan. "Fundraising is a critical topic," Chapman wrote. "But that topic itself is going to be affected directly by whether we have a clear, compelling forward strategy. I know that the Ahmansons are only going to be available to us if we have such a strategy and I think it would be wise to involve them directly in settling on it as the options clarify." It was a logical pitch: As a key financier of the Christian right with a penchant for anti-gay campaigns, Ahmanson clearly shared the Anglican Council's interest in subverting the left-leaning church. Moreover, Ahmanson and his wife were close friends and prayer partners of David Anderson, the Anglican Council's chief executive, while Chapman and his political team were already enjoying hefty annual grants from Ahmanson to Chapman's think tank, the Discovery Institute.
Soon, the money came rolling in to the Anglican Council, with more than $1 million in donations from Ahmanson in 2000 and 2001. And the newly flush Anglican Council redoubled its anti-gay campaign, climaxing in November when the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay bishop, the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson. With its war chest full and its strongest pretext yet for a schism, the group cranked up a smear campaign against Robinson, falsely accusing him of sexual harassment and administering a bisexual pornography Web site, prompting three wealthy dioceses to split with the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Council's renegade network. Now more dioceses and parishes are poised to follow, a prospect that threatens to weaken the progressive Episcopal Church's political influence -- 44 members of Congress are Episcopalian -- and provide an important new tableau for right-wing political organizing.
The Episcopal Church split is only a small part of Ahmanson's concerted efforts to radically transform not only American religion, but the nation's moral culture and, thereby, the country itself. His money has made possible some of the most pivotal conservative movements in America's recent history, including the 1994 GOP takeover of the California Assembly, a ban on gay marriage and affirmative action in California, and the mounting nationwide campaign to prove Darwin wrong about evolution. His financial influence also helped propel the recent campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. And besides contributing cash to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Ahmanson has played an important role in driving Bush's domestic agenda by financing the career of Marvin Olasky, a conservative intellectual whose ideas inspired the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
After more than 20 years of politically oriented philanthropy, Ahmanson is now emerging as one of the major financial angels of the right, putting him in the company of Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil and banking heir who bankrolled the groundwork for much of the conservative movement's apparatus and became a household name in the 1990s thanks to his $2.4 million dirty-tricks campaign against President Bill Clinton.
Yet few Americans have heard of Ahmanson -- and that's the way he likes it. Unlike Scaife, Ahmanson donates cash either out of his own pocket or through his unincorporated corporate entity, Fieldstead and Co., to avoid having to report the names of his grantees to the IRS. His Tourette's syndrome only adds to his reclusive persona, as his fear of speaking leads him to shun the media. And while Scaife travels the world in his own jet, Ahmanson shuns luxury for a lifestyle of down-to-earth humility. As his wife of 17 years, Roberta Green Ahmanson, told me, he once gave up his seat on an airplane for a refund. And when he goes out for a spin in his neighborhood in Newport Beach, a posh coastal community 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, he drives a Prius, Toyota's new, environment-friendly hybrid car. It's a modest choice for a man who could afford an entire Hummer dealership, but nevertheless a considerable upgrade from his old Datsun pickup.
Next Page: He does with his money "what God wants him to"
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http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/01/06/ahmanson/index.html
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